Luntsford files signatures for November PA ballot

She comes from a family where one parent is Democrat and the other is Republican so Independent leanings shouldn’t be a surprise, said Stephanie Luntsford after filing her “Petition for the Nomination of an Independent Candidate” with the Randolph County Clerk.

Luntsford’s name will appear on the November 2 ballot as Independent candidate for Randolph County Prosecuting Attorney.

Luntsford, a resident of Cairo, currently serves as assistant prosecuting attorney for Randolph County and maintains her private practice in Moberly focusing on general law. She served in the Randolph County prosecutor’s office from 1995-1997 and returned in February 2008. She served as Huntsville Municipal Prosecutor for three years and has been Municipal Judge there since 2003.

Filing for major party candidates ended March 30. Voters overwhelmingly approved in April making the prosecutor’s position fulltime.

Besides being raised a “free thinker” Luntsford said she hadn’t made the decision to run by the end of March. The decision came after much discussion with her husband Tim and “a lot of soul searching.”

“I’ve been thinking about running for a long time,” said Luntsford. “It’s a career goal of mine to run for prosecutor at some point.

Until January, the prosecutor’s position is still part-time with two assistant prosecuting attorneys, one of which is Luntsford. A concession the office and the county had to make in order to afford making the prosecutor full-time was relinquishing one of the assistants

Luntsford said she would like to work more closely with the different agencies the prosecutor’s office deals with on a regular basis.

“I would like to build more of a team effort,” she said.

Luntsford is a 1991 graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia school of Journalism and a 1995 graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law. She and her husband have two daughters Aliyah, 9, and Paige, 4. She has a stepson Kyle, 16; stepdaughter, Cindy Breusch and husband Mike and their two children, Dylan and Chloe; and stepdaughter Lanette Luntsford.